@bgweb - IMHO, that cricket test is misleading: You are trying to get an expert response from a general purpose chat LLM, that rather qualifies as a misunderstanding of the tool than as a sign of the tool being no good. Ask it to assist you researching certain players scores in time frame A based on the reliable data to be found somewhere you define as reliable source, plus ask it to double check any answers against a second reliable source before answering, and the result will be different, promised. "the potential problems remain huge" is correct, it takes people who know how to avoid those, and who know when not to rely on AI.
Good brand mentioning appears to be key for AIO inclusion. I know brand-as-ranking-signal has always been viewed skeptically or as possibly unfair in the webmaster community, but there is some value to the brand concept. Consumers simply get bonus reassurance when going to well-established brands, assuming they would not be as well established if they were no good at all.
That may be objectively wrong in some cases, but protects from complete fallout, too (think of buying some item and having to choose between the cheap remake and a well-known brands product).
What I sometimes wonder is: How come there seem to be a lot of people publishing on the web who have had millions of visitors over the course of a few years, but failed to generate any brand recognition whilst having all that attention. That cannot be disconnected from your publications quality, if millions of people fail to remember your website was a cool thing to visit, what has gone wrong there? I know this is a painful question, but anyone can hardly blame google for missing that opportunity.
Back to traffic changes:
May was extraordinary strong conversion wise, google traffic has re-stabilized at April levels, bot visits are outrageous and CF isn't keeping up with a large portion of them - yet again, overall conversions were great and revenue is up on my project.
Putting in a lot of work cleansing the UI and removing technical dept lately, sometimes "move forward regardless" is a good strategy when google goes crazy.
[edited by: not2easy at 12:01 pm (utc) on Jun 2, 2026]
[edit reason] (quoted post removed/ToS) [/edit]
